It's a little early but...

My friend Jen called from Texas to let me know she had just purchased her little girls Halloween costume at Babystyle (I know it's August, she knows it’s August, we ALL know it's entirely too early to be thinking about Halloween!!) Well I was in Scottsdale yesterday for a Crate and Barrel run, and I walked right by the Babystyle at the mall. The boys and I headed in, and look what we found!! When I showed Alan the costume last night, he wasn't so sure, since being a chick doesn't exactly fit Will's personality. Alan thought he should be a monkey or a wild boar. But that's what I love so much about the costume!! Will looks so sweet and innocent (ok, and ridiculous) which he is NOT! That's what makes it the perfect costume.

Cousins

Alex is having a great time getting to know all of his cousins that live in Arizona. There are 7 cousins that live within 15 minutes of us, and 3 more that are only an hour and a half away. He has begun to totally idolize a few of them, and asks if he can have a "playdate with his cousin today." Most of them are older and in school all day, but we've been able to spend some time with each of them, and Alex always has a great time!

Big Blue Eyes

Saturday Projects

Growing up we always had Saturday projects. My parents would wake us long before we would have liked with some kind of home improvement task in mind. I'll never forget being sung to by my dad (in an awful voice, I might add) or my mom's favorite get-the-kids-out-of-bed technique: blaring her favorite music, which usually consisted of Bette Midler or Celine Dion or Kenny Rogers (all of which I can appreciate much more now then I did then!) It used to drive me crazy, and I could never understand why my parents wanted to torture me before 9 am each and every Saturday. Now that I'm a parent, I totally get it! Saturday morning is a time to GET THINGS DONE. Things that you never have the time or mental concentration to accomplish during the week, because of the distractions of lifes commitments and managing a family. But on Saturday mornings, everyone is home, there is little going on, and it's the perfect time to accomplish a task like going through 8 years worth of files full of cable bills and birthday cards. So after the task of organizing was complete, the shredding began! I'm so glad we have a few years before we will be playing the role of awful parents torturing their teenagers. That doesn't mean that we haven't faced resistance from the troops on our projects! This morning Alex and I had the following conversation:
Alex: "Hi mommy, what are you doing?"
Me: "I'm going to work on a project. Want to help?"
Alex: "No thanks. I'm going to play in my room. But have a great time!"
Those are direct quotes. I can only imagine the resistance I will face in a few years.

Time with Nana

Here's what's great about living by family: when you have a house full of stuff that really needs to be unpacked because you have just moved hundreds of miles away from your home and you just can't seem to get it done because you have a 3-year-old and an extremely high maintenance 16-month-old who require the attention of both adults who are working on said project and you are just about to give up, your phone might ring and someone from the family that now lives near by offers to take your boys for a few hours, you can say, I will bring them over. And you can know that the person taking care of them loves them and wants to spend time with them. It's an incredible feeling, and not at all overrated.

He's BACK!

This fascinating photo is of Alan.... juggling. He spent a few minutes today cleaning out his old closet at his parent’s home and came across his old juggling pins (is that what they are called?? Who knows.) Anyway, I had to post this because Alan made such a great comment yesterday after making himself laugh at one of his own jokes. I heard him mutter, under his breath and to no one in particular, "I'm starting to like myself again." I smiled and had to agree that we are all starting to like Alan again. (***Disclaimer- it's not that we didn't LOVE him, it's just that, well, he hasn’t been the easy-going-happy-calm-go-with-the-flow Alan that we all used to know and love and completely ENJOY being around. Regardless, it's so wonderful to be catching glimpses of that pre-dental school and residency Alan.) WELCOME BACK, hon.

First Day of School!

Alex had his first day of preschool today at the Ladybug Learning Club. He was so excited to go spend the day with Mrs. Anderson. I can not tell you how pleased I was when reading Mrs. Andersons bio to find out that she believes her calling in life is to be a preschool teacher! How great is that? I feel really lucky to have her be the teacher that Alex will have his first school experience with. I can't believe he is old enough to be going. When I dropped him off in his classroom, he didn't even look back.

BLT's for FHE

Tonight we had our first FHE in our new house. Alan and I have set some new goals now that we are in "post-student" life, one of them being regular family home evening on Monday nights, which had not been a regular occurrence in our home with Alan's schedule. It was so fun to spend the evening together. We had a great talk all about being a child of God. Alex has a big day tomorrow- his first official day of preschool- and the theme for the day will be "getting to know you." We wanted to make sure that Alex knows the most important thing about himself- that he is a child of God. We also had to fill a bag for him to take with him to school tomorrow with 5 things that are important to him or tell something about him. Here are the five items that made it into the bag: a baseball, a mini Texas flag, a picture of Will, the label off of the package of bacon from our BLT's (he ate about a 1/2 lb. himself- he loves bacon!), and of course, Thomas-the-tank-engine.
On another note, we seem to be getting busier and busier by the day here in Arizona. We started today by sleeping through our first day of our new playgroup, after which we rushed around to get ready for preschool orientation this morning, and then this afternoon Alex had Sports Class at Little Gym. I'm missing our lazy summer mornings in Texas where we stay in our pajamas until 11 am when we would then get in the pool in backyard. No driving, no shuttling around, no unpacking and organizing to do-just relaxing and maybe having friends over to play. What good memories. Tomorrow it's off to preschool by 8:30, visit from the relief society at 10am, unpack and organize until preschool pickup and cousin playdate at 12pm. And the move-in to-do lists just keep growing!!

Moving In

We are officially spending our first night in our new house in Arizona! Everything is a disaster as you can see, but the boys are in bed and we have a great air conditioning system, so life could not be better right now. There is so much more room in this house then we had in Texas, it feels enormous to our small family (and it's not even 2000 sqare feet!) It feels great to be in our own place surrounded by our own things. Tomorrow, the work begins of sorting through it all! We'll post after pictures when it's all done.

Alex wanted braces so...

Nana got him some of his very own! He has been very jealous of mine ever since I got them on a couple of months ago! It's actually very entertaining to see how much both of the boys already pay attention to teeth in general.

Alan's FINAL Graduation!!

Alan giving his graduation speech!

Alan surrounded by his adoring Baylor assistants. It was hard to say goodbye to such great coworkers.

Dave and Julie Curtis, us, Mary Anne and Don Clarke.

It was great to have our parents there to show their support.

Celebrating with the boys (who were suppose to be sleeping!) and chocolate ecstasy cake (our Texas favorite) after graduation. Don't you love the Texas flags they are waving on their last night as Texans?

It was a long awaited night and both Alan and I were in disbelief that it was actually occurring. It felt very surreal, but very rewarding at the same time. I am so proud of Alan for accomplishing this goal. I've never known a harder worker. All night long the professors, staff members, full and part time faculty at Baylor kept coming up to Alan and telling him what a great orthodontist he would be. Several of them told me that he was the best they have seen come out of the program in a long time. I felt so proud and it (sort of=)) made all of the long lonely week and weekends and endless study and clinic sessions worth it. I'm so happy for him and all that he has accomplished!

My best day of parenting so far

This evening, while Alan and I were rushing around trying to get ready for an evening out with my parents, we left Will momentarily unsupervised in the kitchen. From the bathroom, we heard this screeching noise and both went running towards it. There hung will, having climbed out of his high chair, I guess too impatient to wait for us get him out in the normal fashion. The best part is that we made him hang there until we would snap these pictures! This is such typical Will behavior that neither of us was all that shocked or concerned. What a crazy kid!

Farewel Luncheon

We just got home from the farewell luncheon our friends threw for the boys and I. We all gathered for lunch at Le Madeline. It was such a great time, and the perfect way to say goodbye to so many amazing friends that we will never forget! My friend Lara made the darling book. She and Jen gathered memory messages from our friends and bound them all with pictures from the last 2 years! The picture does not do it justice. I couldn’t even read it while we were at the lunch, because I would have lost it! We had a great time and will miss our Texas friends so very much. We felt so loved and we hope they all know how much we love them as well. More pictures to follow.

My parents arrive tonight, Alan defends on Thursday, graduation is Friday.... it’s all happening so fast!

Cute pics of Will!

My new best friend, and Alex's too.

So as I have said before, Alan has not been around- at all. You would think that I would be desperately lonely and miserable and exhausted without any help with the boys. I assure, you I am not! Miss Desiera Green from our ward, one of the young women that I have been lucky enough to get to know during my time here in Dallas, has joined the family and we are functioning just great! She has been helping me with grocery store trips, playdates at the pool, trips to the mall, pool time in the backyard- she even watched the boys so I could go see a movie with my girlfriends this week! Alan asked me this morning if we could adopt her and take her to Arizona with us. She has been a total lifesaver and I'm not sure how we will function without her! Desi- your welcome in Arizona anytime!

My husband is obssesed with Cuba

Things are stressful over here. Alan just got back from a weekend trip to Arizona where he tried to find us a house (did I mention we are moving in less than 2 weeks?!) The part of this that is stressful is that we still don’t have a house lined up. Now he is back in Texas and it’s back to “the writing of the thesis,” which generally means that we will see him a week from Friday, when he graduates, and not at all before. After we picked him up from the airport yesterday, Alex was so excited to see him he could hardly contain himself. On the drive home, Alan would try to say something to me and we would be loudly interrupted by a high-pitched voice from the backseat that would screech “EXCUSE me DADDY, I need to tell you something!!” When we got home and Alan grabbed his bag to head to the clinic, there was even louder protesting that included some yelling, kicking and tears, all of which were resolved after some candy and a Thomas video. We are in survival mode, doing whatever it takes to get through the day.
Why, you ask, is the title of this entry My husband is obsessed with Cuba? Because this morning at 6:45am I was greeted by Alan (who arrived home at 3:13am last night), and this was his good morning comment, “Christie, there is hope for our future! Fidel Castro resigned his power last night!” (As a side note, Alan has a dream of living in Cuba…. I have no further explanation as to WHY this is a dream of his). I can not imagine how he has room in his brain for anything more than what we already have going on: thesis, house hunting, starting a business, potty-training, packing, leaving all of our friends, moving to the DESERT, etc.(granted, Alan is probably only worried about one of those things: thesis). I guess I can chalk this up to the difference between men and women. Oh, and I think I will follow Alan’s lead and listen to the news today. It seems like a great way for me to get outside of my own small life and think about something with greater impact (also- I could use a break from the constant potty-talk around here- our celebration yesterday over Alex #2 in the toilet was way over the top).